Details Are Part of Our Difference
David Booth on How to Choose an Advisor
20 Years. 20 Lessons. Still Taking the Long View.
Making the Short List: Citywire Highlights Our Research-Driven Approach
The Tax Law Changed. Our Approach Hasn’t.
Category: Video
Larry Swedroe on the Excess Returns Podcast
We’re grateful to have Larry Swedroe as both a longtime friend to Hill Investment Group and a foundational voice in the evidence-based investing community. For decades, Larry has helped investors cut through noise, resist prediction-driven thinking, and stay anchored in the data – an approach that has shaped our work and benefited the clients we serve.
In his latest appearance on the October 22nd Excess Returns podcast (the same show our CIO, Matt Zenz, joined recently), Larry brings that perspective to today’s big conversations around tariffs, immigration, AI, and market structure.
“HTC” WARNING: Be forewarned, this is Highly Technical Content, best consumed by the heavy-duty fact finders in our audience and to all those who want to take a deeper dive into why we believe what we believe.
If you only have a few minutes…
Jump to 33:05, where Larry explains why smaller, more nimble funds can access deeper exposures in areas like small-cap value – an insight that reinforces one of the key advantages of our own approach to managing The Longview Advantage ETF (EBI).
It’s a thoughtful, wide-ranging conversation, and we’re thankful for Larry’s ongoing partnership and the clarity he brings to evidence-based investing.
Weathering Uncertainty: Why Staying Invested Still Wins
In this short video, Matt Zenz discusses how to navigate today’s market highs along with the current geopolitical tensions that have some investors worried. Drawing a parallel to the market events from 2019 through 2025, he reminds viewers that—even amid global crises such as pandemics, wars, inflation, and policy shifts—the U.S. stock market (as measured by the S&P 500 Index) has more than doubled.
In other words, by enduring the roller coaster ride, staying invested, and taking the long view, Hill clients aim to capture the market’s inherent growth over time.
Source: S&P 500 Total Return Index (Bloomberg), data from 9/30/2019–9/30/2025.
TRANSCIPT
Matt here, the Chief Investment Officer at Hill Investment Group. We’ve heard from a lot of clients that you love videos, so we answered the call. Here’s another one. Today we’re going to be talking about market risk and current heightened geopolitical tensions.
Right now, the markets are at all time heights and it feels too good to be true. It feels like the shoe has to drop and markets are going to dip. And so we’ve had a few client conversations where our clients were concerned about that and they wanted to know what we should do. So to help answer this question, let’s go back in time a little bit.
Let’s go back to 2019 and imagine we were having a similar conversation. But rather than there being uncertainty I gave you, I said, in the next five years, there’s going to be a global pandemic where entire supply chains are going to be shut down. There’s going to be uncertainty around political elections. Russia is going to invade Ukraine and it’s going to create a potential European conflict. We’re gonna have unprecedented inflation, higher than we’ve ever seen since the 1970s. We’re also gonna have an economic policy in the US where we do global tariffs, completely reordering the global supply chains, not just against their enemies, but also our allies.
If I told you all of these things were going to happen over the next five, six years, would you wanna be invested in the stock market?
You probably would say, no way, get me out. Well, when we look at what happened, the market’s actually doubled since 2019. And if you had gotten out even with perfect foresight of what was going to happen, you would have half the money you’d have today. Now, there is uncertainty in the future as well, but here’s what we do know.
What we do know is that markets are always priced to give investors a positive return. If investors thought the market was going to go down, no one would buy it at that price and the price would correct. And so what we do know is the best way to manage this uncertainty is to stay invested, to capture the returns that the market gives you with the ups and downs. And by taking the long view, you will end up in the best financial situation.
The Longview Advantage ETF: Your Fund, Built for the Long View
We created the Longview Advantage ETF (EBI) to give our clients the best of evidence-based investing at the lowest possible cost. In this update, Matt Hall and Matt Zenz share how it’s working.
TRANSCRIPT
Matt Hall:
Okay, I told you we’re gonna do more videos. We’re doing another video. I’m here with Matt Zenz, CIO of Hill Investment Group, and the architect of our ETF. We thought it might be fun for you and important to just know a little bit more about the Longview Advantage, ETF. And Matt, one of the things that we’re really proud of that we haven’t communicated maybe to our audience is the Longview Advantage.
ETF symbol EBI is getting a lot of attention. What should our clients know about it? What’s the most important thing they should understand?
Matt Zenz:
Yeah, I think there’s kind of two different ways to look at this. The first is, as an evidence-based investor, which we all are, all of our clients are, is that you win because this is designed better. We combined all of the most compelling ideas across the evidence-based community into one fund. And then we’re implementing it without compromise. Because we’re smaller, which we all are, all of our clients are, is that you win because this is designed better. We combined all of the most compelling ideas across the evidence-based community into one fund. And then we’re implementing it without compromise.
Because we’re smaller, because we’re more nimble, we’re able to more effectively go after what the evidence says. You’re able to pick up the pennies, and that means wins means higher returns for you as a client, but then also as a client of Hill Investment Group, you get to win again because you get this strategy at cost. We don’t charge our clients for it. So that means we run it at the lowest possible cost to our end clients. Our clients save about a half a million dollars a year in fees because they’re, because they aren’t paying what they were paying before some of the other managers. And so you get to win both on the structure of the fund and also the cost of the fund.
Matt Hall:
Yeah. Well that’s obviously a home run. And how has it performed since February? Since it launched?
Matt Zenz:
It performed exactly as it was designed, on par with what we would expect based on how we designed the strategy.
We want to emphasize smaller, deeper value, more profitable companies. We’ve been able to do that as a structure, and the performance has been exactly in line with what you would expect for that type of portfolio.
Matt Hall:
Awesome. Well, thanks for sharing that. To all of our clients, thank you for your support. We’ve had unbelievable confidence in the strategy and just wanted to share this update with you. Let us know if you have any other questions.
